Unions, clamoring for their piece of the pie, look like bad poker players

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Let's say you go to your boss and ask for a raise. He says no. So you pool your money with your fellow employees and use it to replace your boss with a boss who will give you a raise.

I bet you wish you could do that. It's what public sector unions have been doing for years. This is what the Battle of Wisconsin is all about. As long as you have governors who are willing to exempt unions from shared sacrifices in order to win elections, or governors who are literally in bed with the unions -- as New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine was -- it's impossible for any collective bargaining process to produce a result that is fair to the taxpayer.

Government workers are not abused or exploited in this country. In Wisconsin especially, they enjoy robust civil service protections that have nothing to do with their union. As I noted last week, and as the Daily Caller noted yesterday, most of the teachers quoted in the news media at these protests are well-compensated and do better than most private-sector workers in Wisconsin. The main difference is that government workers have much better job security, and in the case of teachers they get 13 weeks off every year.

On the Left, they think they have a winning issue here. I think they're wrong, and in the worst sort of way from their perspective. I suspect that when the dust clears, we'll look back and compare them to the poker player who gets all excited about his flush and goes all in, only to see his opponent turn over a full house. In an age of austerity, it's just the wrong time for public sector workers to clamor for bigger pieces of the pie, or even for continued exemption from the much harsher reality that workers and businesses face in the private sector.

About The Author

Bio:David Freddoso came to the Washington Examiner in June 2009, after serving for nearly two years as a Capitol Hill-based staff reporter for National Review Online.
Before writing his New York Times bestselling book, The Case Against Barack Obama, he spent three years assisting Robert Novak, the legendary Washington...

David Freddoso came to the Washington Examiner in June 2009, after serving for nearly two years as a Capitol Hill-based staff reporter for National Review Online.

Before writing his New York Times bestselling book, The Case Against Barack Obama, he spent three years assisting Robert Novak, the legendary Washington columnist. Freddoso arrived in Washington in late 2001 and began covering Capitol Hill for the conservative weekly newspaper Human Events.